Image: Hubble Census Tracks a Stellar "Baby Boom"

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ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

This graph traces the history of the rate of star formation over
the past 12 billion years from shortly after the birth of the
universe to the present.

The graph is based on observations of distant galaxies made by
Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories. Hubble
shows a steep rise in star formation rate that happened shortly
after the big bang. The ground-based data show the precipitous
decline in star formation rate started from about 9 billion years
ago to present. No observations exist yet to fill in the gap
between these two data sets, where the slopes would joint to form
a peak of starbirth activity. This will be an area of researche
by Hubble in the future.

The vertical axis gives values for the mean rate of star formation as
multiples of today's rate (unit value 1). Data suggest this rate may have been
as high as 15 times today's value. The horizontal axis shows time in billions
of years, from the big bang to present.